About two years ago I blogged about zombie provisions of the failed ACTA treaty, which resurfaced in other treaties such the the“Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement” (CETA). In the new multingual Eutopia magazine I have now published an article on the currently debated Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP):
The dispute over the planned TTIP transatlantic free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States goes far beyond the treaty itself, the reason being the tradition in which TTIP is grounded.
It is merely the most recent acronym in a constantly expanding family of abbreviations, its best known members including GATT, TRIPS, GATS, MAI, ACTA, CETA and TPP*.
[…]
The kinship in terms of content and form between TTIP and its aforementioned predecessors makes the agreement an un-dead treaty returned from the grave.
Zombie clauses such as investment protection measures, which did not make their way into previous agreements due to widespread resistance, have reappeared in and around the TTIP negotiations. We are looking at a “recurring dynamic of progressing liberalization projects, their partial weakening after protests, and their repeated adoption” (Oliver Prausmüller and Alice Wagner, Reclaim Public Services, 2014).
Read the full article over at Eutopia Magazine in English (translated by Katy Derbyshire) and German.
(leonhard)
Filed under: Governance of markets, Uncategorized
